I sit and wait.
The white church stares back at me, its windows dark and imposing in the grayness. But not for long now.
Mom came with me last week. I told her I wanted to see this, to kind of capture it in my memory because I wanted to imagine what Ryan saw—the beauty, the height. Something beautiful, somewhere simple.
It’s been five months.
“Is this seat taken?”
The sound of another voice startles me, and I look up to find Whit standing there, looking a little sheepish, a paper bag curled into his fist.
“Yeah. Sure.” I look back toward the church. I breathe for a second, louder than I mean to, as he sits down next to me, leaving a millimeter of space between our arms. “How did you know I was here?”
He fiddles with the paper bag. “I called you last night and your mom picked up. She said—well, she said I should meet you here.” He unrolls the top of the bag. “I brought bagels.”
“Mom loves you.” I give him a close-mouthed smile as he pulls out a bagel and splits the two halves, giving me the bigger piece. They have cream cheese and everything. I bite into it without saying anything. It’s kind of nice—sitting there and not worrying about what he’s going to say. Just being.
“Do you know how stupid you looked in front of that Hawaiian backdrop, spilling your feelings?” Whit asks over his unbitten bagel.
I lick cream cheese off my lip. “About as stupid as you looked sitting at a table with Adrienne.”
“What is it?” he asks, pointing with his bagel half. “With the church?”
“You have to watch,” I tell him, biting into my bagel. “The sun will hit the very top first, at that little window cutout.” I point up to it for him. His eyes follow my finger. “And then it’ll start spreading down faster. Like a really great song, you know? Slow buildup and then suddenly, it hits into this crescendo that doesn’t let up and the adrenaline builds and there’s highs and lows, and it’s—you never want it to end. You could listen to it over and over again.” My hands fly in front of me as I speak, my free fingers spreading out over the enormity of the windows. I drop my hands back into my lap. “At least, that’s what Ryan used to say. More poetic, of course. He’d take me to the services sometimes, but I never really knew if he believed any of it.”
I glance over at Whit, and he’s not looking at the church, but at me. I can’t make out what he’s thinking—I’d probably sound stupid if I tried—but it’s nothing bad. It could be fondness, or maybe thoughtfulness. He has a little bit of cream cheese on his face, so I reach over and wipe it off his cheek. My hand leaves his face but lingers in the space between us. “Why are you here?”
“Wanted to see you,” he mutters, sheepish.
“To make fun of me? Tell me to leave you alone?”
His eyes meet mine, doing that searching thing he does so well, analyzing me like the ninth hole or something. And then he kisses me. An inappropriate-for-public-venues kiss. “You’re not the only one who feels trapped,” he says when he pulls back. “You know?”
“No.”
“Not just by this place,” he says, bringing his hand up to slide into my hair. “But other stuff. Like being better than my brother, for example. Or by being part of your popularity games. Or just by who you are.”
“I saw the video from Coxie’s party. What you said about me,” I say. Even though he kissed me, I still don’t know what it means. I don’t know if he’s toying with my emotions or something. I want to know. I want him to tell me. “I don’t blame you.”
“You of all people should know a little something about wounded pride,” he says. We’re still so close together. He smirks, an inch from my mouth. “I’m sorry I said that stuff. I was hurt. I still am hurt, Liv. But I do want to know. If we can come back from this.”
Another few beats of silence pass by.
“It’s not always so bad, you know? Buckley,” I tell him. “Ryan used to be so good at finding the little things that could be so beautiful, but he forgot, I think. I don’t want to forget. Like you. You’re beautiful in your overpriced Banana Republic, with a driver in your hands, watching a ball fade into the sunset.”
He narrows his eyes. “I am?”
“And Claire and Ellie, they’re beautiful, too, even when they’re fighting—how in love they are, how it hurts Claire when the people she grew up with reject her, but how they make each other happy despite all of that.
“I’m not trapped,” I tell him. “I thought I was. And I’m not so afraid anymore. I looked so stupid up there, but I was me, you know? In front of everybody, I was me, not who I thought they wanted me to be or expected me to be or anything else.”
“You were amazing,” he says.
Half a smile finds its way onto my face. “I was?”
“Did you mean what you said?” he asks, and the shy boy is still under there a little bit. He thinks I might reject him, even now.
“Most of it.” I catch my bottom lip with my teeth. “I had this joke prepared about how stupid your hair was, but I forgot it when I started talking.”
He laughs, kisses me again. “You know, I said I’d never speak to you again, but Mrs. Baker kind of changed my mind.”
“She did?” I ask, taken aback.
He nods. “Yeah. When she came back to school, she would barely make eye contact with me, for obvious reasons, but she’s got a job in a different county now. She’s moving,” he adds.
I stare away from the church, down at my hands, ashamed.
“So she started working with me again, and it was cool. I told her that I would cut you off for good, and she said, if you hadn’t done what you did, her life would be ruined. She said she figured it was a lot of stress to be Olivia Clayton and that maybe she was too hard on you and maybe I was, too. She said she forgave you, and that if I still cared about you, that was okay.” He shrugs. “That maybe it meant something.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like that I knew who you were at your worst and your best, and I loved you the whole time,” he says, turning all red and sweet. Looking at me until he’s so embarrassed he has to look away.
I almost tear up. I feel free, I realize. Okay in my own skin.
I don’t remember the last time that happened.
“So what does this mean?” I ask finally. “You want to date, like, for real?”
He presses his forehead against mine, in that display of intimacy we got used to when we were faking it, only this time, every second of it is real. “If I don’t embarrass you too much.”
“I’ll still get you in trouble, you know,” I respond, but the weight is floating off my shoulders and the uncontrollable butterflies he gives me are taking over from within and running into all the sides of my stomach. I let myself smile.
“I love you,” he says next to my mouth.
I kiss him, grab his hand, and pull his arm over my shoulders. “Shut up,” I say, nudging him. “It’s starting.”
After watching me a minute more, he turns to the church, where the smallest bit of sunlight hits the cutout window, taking my breath away.
He whispers it again.
Like the best songs, I could listen over and over.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Olivia and co. have been with me for a long time, but there are so many other people without whom these characters wouldn’t have existed. First and foremost, thanks go to my agent Diana Fox, who invested so much time in helping me shape this book, even without knowing if it would ever come together. I am so lucky she saw something in the many rough forms Olivia’s story took and championed it so passionately.
My editor, Erin Stein, honored me so much by picking this book to be one of the first voices of her brand-new imprint. Her keen eye helped me to find depths to these characters I never knew existed. Huge thanks as well go to Nicole Otto, Natalie C. Sousa, and the whole team at Macmillan for making this dream a reality.
I absolutely have to mention my family, who have been so sup
portive throughout this process—Drew, Brenda, Will & Kyle, and everyone else in the extended Woolbright & Devore clans. Most of all to my wonderful Mama and Daddy, Bob and Pam Devore, who still don’t know why I turned out this way but love me anyway.
The list of friends who have helped me get this far could be a novel in and of itself, but to Campbell, Erin, Felicia, Jamie, Meisha, Mitchel, Randi, Sarah C., Sarah W., and everyone else—I hope you found yourselves here in some way. Amanda, thanks for being such a talented photog! Rachel, Mary, and Maura, thanks for being the best coworkers a girl could ask for.
Lastly, the writer community has been my creative refuge in the world since I started writing more than six years ago. The friendships I’ve made stretch across so many online spaces, both defunct and active—thanks to the wonderful writers and alumni of AW, LBs, and Writer Cooler III in particular. More people have read this book than I have space to list but a huge shout-out to Rachael Allen, Erin Brambilla, Lindsey Roth Culli, Debra Driza, Sarah Harian, Rachel Simon, and Kara Thomas for their notes and encouragement. Thanks for reading this book in its many iterations and giving me invaluable feedback. And truly, thank you to anyone unmentioned who had eyes on this book—I know the list extends further back than my e-mail account, and you have all helped me to grow so much as a writer.
Most of all, thank you for reading.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurie Devore was born and raised in small-town South Carolina and graduated from Clemson University. She now lives and works in Chicago, where she misses the charms and contradictions of the South every day. In her spare time, she reluctantly runs marathons, watches too much TV, and works a “y’all” into every conversation. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Laurie Devore
A part of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
fiercereads.com
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Devore, Laurie, author.
Title: How to break a boy / Laurie Devore.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Imprint, 2017. | Summary: “A cheerleader questions whether she can quit her mean girl ways—or if she is just rotten at the core”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016015265 (print) | LCCN 2016042639 (ebook) | ISBN 9781250082862 (hardback) | ISBN 9781250082879 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Cheerleading—Fiction. | Self-perception—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.D489 Ho 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.D489 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015265
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Imprint logo designed by Amanda Spielman
First hardcover edition 2017
eBook edition January 2017
eISBN 9781250082879
I’m not going to ask you not to take this book—I’m going to warn you. This book knows who you are. It knows what you’ve done. And this book will ruin you.
How to Break a Boy Page 29